Sonnet 18

[Bella Fortuna]

Neruda is my favourite poet, ever. He inspires such an ache... I can rarely read him without tears.

[hadespussercats]

^ I love Neruda, too.

J and I had a rocky start to love. We broke up for four years.
When we found each other again, J said this poem reminded him of our time apart:

XLIII

I hunt for a sign of you in all the others,
in the rapid undulant river of women,
braids, shyly sinking eyes,
light step that slides, sailing through the foam.

Suddenly I think I can make out your nails--
oblong, quick, nieces of a cherry--
then it's your hair that passes by, and i think
I see your image, a bonfire, burning in the water.

I searched, but no one else had your rhythms,
your light, the shady day you brought from the forest;
nobody had your tiny ears.

You are whole-- exact-- and everything you are is one,
and so I go along, with you I float along, loving
a wide Mississippi toward a feminine sea.

[Bella Fortuna]

This is the one of his that means the most to me.

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

My favourite is sonnet 61. Anyone that has ever had a long-distance romance should be able to relate to this - as always, Billy Rattlestaff speaks across the centuries to all that is common in our experience. There is a Coil album (soundtrack to a Jarman, gay, art-film called The Angelic Conversation) with Judy Dench reading this which is totally heartbreaking.

He also does a nice job of cutting through the woo that he sets up in the first 4 couplets later in the poem.

Sonnet LXI
Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.

[hadespussercats]

This is the one of his that means the most to me.

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

A beautiful poem. But not one you should read if you're feeling lonely and blue.
Hope today is happier.